Baseball

Even with the modern emphasis on statistics (“sabermetrics”), attempts to speed up the game, and scientific measurements, baseball is one of the most pastoral of sports.* It is also one of the most traditional.

“Keeping score” is a core baseball tradition — a way of taking notes during the game. Like taking notes in class, the main purpose is to help you slow down and concentrate on the event. It pushes you to process the event and condense it into a few marks of lead or ink. It may later serve as an aid to memory, but that is not the sole purpose.

Here’s a primer on keeping score, though I am going to give you an alternative blank scorecard that I designed and that I think works better than the traditional format:

And “The Yankees’ rotation will flounder: And being both unable and unwilling to land a top-flight starter via trade, the prodigious Yankees offense is wasted as New York hangs around .500 all year. (As do the Oakland A’s, which tells you everything you need to know about the Yanks’ campaign.)” per FOX Sports [link]